In 1971, Louis Stokes of Ohio became the first Black
Representative to sit on the powerful House Appropriations
Committee, eventually rising to become chair of its
Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban
Development, and Independent Agencies, where he
helped direct billions of dollars in federal spending to vital
government services. Over the course of his 30-year career
in Congress, Stokes, who had spent part of his childhood in
public housing in Cleveland before becoming Ohio’s first
Black Representative in 1969, used his influence to increase
opportunities for millions of African Americans. “I’m going
to keep on denouncing the inequities of this system, but I’m
going to work within it. To go outside the system would be
to deny myself—to deny my own existence. I’ve beaten the
system. I’ve proved it can be done—so have a lot of others,”
Stokes said. “But the problem is that a black man has to be
extra special to win in this system. Why should you have to
be a super black to get someplace? That’s what’s wrong in
the society. The ordinary black man doesn’t have the same
chance as the ordinary white man does.”1
Louis Stokes was born on February 23, 1925, in Cleveland,
Ohio, to Charles and Louise Cinthy Stokes. His parents,
who met in Cleveland, were both from Georgia and moved to Ohio as part of the Great Migration, leaving the Jim Crow
South for better opportunities in the industrial Midwest.
His father worked in a laundromat and died when Louis
was young. Stokes and his younger brother Carl were raised
by their widowed mother, a domestic worker. The boys’
maternal grandmother played a prominent role in their
upbringing, tending to the children while their mother
cleaned homes in wealthy White suburbs far from downtown
Cleveland. Years later, Louise Stokes remembered that she
had tried to instill in her children “the idea that work with
your hands is the hard way of doing things. I told them over
and over to learn to use their heads.” Louis Stokes helped
the family by shining shoes around his neighborhood and
clerking at an Army/Navy store. He attended Cleveland’s
public schools and served as a personnel specialist in the U.S.
Army from 1943 to 1946. During World War II, he served
in the segregated Army and spent most of his service in the
segregated South. His experience during the war laid bare
for Stokes the basic inequities facing African Americans—even those who were willing to sacrifice everything for their
country. “The scars on my mind from the discrimination,
the indignities, and the segregation which I was forced
to accept while wearing the uniform of my country will never be erased,” Stokes told his colleagues on the House
Floor. He returned home with an honorable discharge,
taking jobs in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
and U.S. Department of the Treasury offices in Cleveland
while attending college at night with the help of the GI
Bill. He attended the Cleveland College of Western Reserve
University from 1946 to 1948. Stokes eventually earned
a law degree from the Cleveland Marshall School of Law
in 1953 and opened a law firm with his brother. Stokes
was married twice and had four children: Shelly, Chuck,
Angela, and Lori.2
Stokes devoted himself to his law practice, taking on
several civil rights cases—often working pro bono on behalf
of poor clients and activists. He was an active participant
in civic affairs, joining the Cleveland branch of the
NAACP and the board of the Cleveland and Cuyahoga bar
associations; he also chaired the Ohio State Bar Association’s
criminal justice committee. Stokes eventually served as vice
president of the NAACP’s Cleveland chapter and led its
legal redress committee for five years. His brother, Carl,
pursued a high-profile career in elective office, serving two
terms in the Ohio legislature, and in 1967, he won election
as mayor of Cleveland, becoming one of the first African
Americans to lead a major U.S. city. “For a long time, I had
very little interest in politics,” Louis Stokes recalled. “Carl
was the politician in the family and I left politics to him.”3
Meanwhile, Louis Stokes enjoyed a growing reputation
as a prominent Cleveland attorney. Working on behalf of
the Cleveland NAACP, Stokes helped challenge the Ohio
legislature’s redistricting in 1965 that followed the Supreme
Court’s “one man, one vote” decisions. The state legislature
had fragmented Cleveland’s congressional districts, diluting
Black voting strength. Stokes joined forces with Charles
Lucas, a Black Republican, to challenge Ohio’s district map.
They lost their case in U.S. District Court, but based on
Stokes’s written appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with
the brief in 1967. From that decision followed the creation
of Ohio’s first majority-Black district. Later that year, in
December 1967, Stokes made an oral argument before
the U.S. Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, a precedent-setting
case that defined the legality of police search and
seizure procedures.4
At his brother Carl’s behest, Louis Stokes made his first
run for elective office in 1968. He sought to win the seat in
the newly created congressional district that encompassed
much of the east side of Cleveland—including Garfield Heights and Newburgh Heights—where African Americans
accounted for 65 percent of the population. Stokes was
hardly a typical newcomer to the political campaign. Carl
put his political network at Louis’s disposal. “I ran my
brother Louis,” Carl Stokes recalled, “and put behind him
all the machinery that just elected me mayor.” With Carl’s
help, Louis cofounded the Twenty-First Congressional
District Caucus—a political organization that would serve
as his base throughout his long congressional career. It
provided the supporters, volunteers, and organizational
structure that sustained Stokes in the absence of support
of the local Democratic machine; it was a loyal cadre
that would do everything, from stuffing envelopes and
knocking on doors to holding an annual picnic that became
a highlight of the community’s annual calendar. With the
local, White-controlled Democratic Party often opposed to
the political ambitions of Black Clevelanders, the caucus
helped develop independent Black political power in the
city. Stokes also had the advantage of having support from
leading Black institutions in the city. He won two vital
endorsements: the support of the Call & Post, the influential
local Black newspaper, and the backing of the vast majority
of the local church ministers in the new district.5
Stokes won the primary with 41 percent of the
vote—double the total of his closest competitor, Black
city councilman Leo A. Jackson. Stokes faced minimal
opposition in his 14 subsequent primaries. In 1976, White
leaders in the local Democratic machine recruited one
of the incumbent’s former staffers to run against him.
Stokes won by a landslide. In the 1968 general election,
Stokes faced Republican Charles Lucas, his ally in the
legal fight to create a majority-Black district. While their
policies slightly differed, both supported a de-escalation of
the Vietnam War; both opposed War on Crime rhetoric;
and both supported policies to end urban poverty.
Their major difference was partisan affiliation, and in
a heavily Democratic district this gave Stokes a nearly
insurmountable advantage. Stokes tied Lucas to Republican
presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon and segregationist
Republican Senator and Nixon supporter Strom Thurmond
of South Carolina, arguing they would not promote
legislation that advanced Black interests. Stokes prevailed
with 75 percent of the vote. He won his subsequent
14 general elections by lopsided margins in the heavily
Democratic district—taking as much as 88 percent
of the vote. Gradually, reapportionment changed the makeup of the state, eliminating five of Ohio’s 24 House
seats. Stokes’s district expanded to include traditionally
White communities like Shaker Heights and Cleveland
Heights. Reapportionment in the early 1990s brought in
working-class White neighborhoods including Euclid in
east Cleveland, but African-American residents still made
up 59 percent of the vote in the district.6
As a first-term Representative, Stokes received
assignments on the Education and Labor Committee and
the Internal Security Committee (formerly the House
Un-American Activities Committee). During his second
term in the House, Stokes earned a seat on the powerful
Appropriations Committee, with oversight of all federal
spending bills. He was the first Black Representative to
win a seat on the prestigious committee. This exclusive
assignment required him to relinquish his other committee
assignments. Years later, Stokes said of the Appropriations
Committee, “It’s the only committee to be on. All the rest
is window dressing.” During his 30-year career, Stokes also
served on the Budget Committee from the 94th through
the 96th Congress (1975–1981), the Select Committee
on Assassinations in the 94th and the 95th Congresses
(1975–1979), the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct from the 96th through the 98th Congress (1979–1985) and again in the 102nd Congress (1991–1993), the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 98th
through the 100th Congress (1983–1989), and the Joint
Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions
with Iran in the 100th Congress.7
Stokes eventually chaired the Appropriations
Committee’s Subcommittee for Veterans, HUD, and
Independent Agencies. As a “cardinal”—the name given to
Appropriations subcommittee chairs—Stokes controlled
more than $90 billion annually in federal money. Stokes was
also one of just a handful of African-American Members
to wield the gavel on multiple panels: the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence (100th Congress),
the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (97th
and 98th Congresses, 102nd Congress), and the Select
Committee on Assassinations (95th Congress).
In 1970, local politics back home in Ohio nearly cost
Stokes his seat on the Appropriations Committee. In
Cleveland, the Twenty-First District Caucus, headed by the
Stokes brothers, was involved in several political disputes
with the local, White-controlled Democratic Party. To
prove their electoral strength in the face of a Democratic machine unwilling to share power, the Stokes-led caucus
endorsed a handful of Republicans for local election.
For Cleveland-based Democratic Congressman Charles
Albert Vanik this was an act of political disloyalty. Vanik,
a member of the Ways and Means Committee which, at
the time served as Democrats’ Committee on Committees,
had the responsibility to choose the Ohio Representative
to Appropriations following the death of Michael Joseph
Kirwan. Initially, he had promised the seat to Stokes, but
he revoked the offer unless Stokes resigned as chairman of
the Twenty-First District Caucus. In response, the other
eight Black Members of the House demanded that Vanik
fulfill his promise to Stokes. Eventually Speaker Carl Albert
of Oklahoma intervened, persuading Vanik to relent and
support Stokes’s placement on Appropriations.8
Few Black Members served in the House when Stokes
arrived on Capitol Hill in 1969. Stokes was joined that
year by first-term lawmakers Shirley Chisholm of New
York and William Lacy “Bill” Clay Sr. of Missouri,
increasing the total number of Black Representatives to
nine. Stokes believed that their elections would transform
Black congressional politics. “We felt that it was a new
day, and that many blacks who lacked representation in
Congress would look to us as their representatives.” As their
number grew, Black legislators sought to create a power
base in Congress. Stokes and Clay quickly developed an
enduring friendship and became strong supporters of the
formation of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), to
promote economic, educational, and social issues important
to African-American voters. In 1972, Stokes succeeded
Charles C. Diggs Jr. as chair of the CBC and sought to
narrow the focus of the caucus to what he believed CBC
members could best accomplish in their role as legislators.
“From the beginning of the CBC we were trying to be all
things to all Black people, and I realized as chairman we
needed to understand we were very limited in numbers,
we were limited in resources.” Under Stokes’s guidance, the
CBC focused on adding what he called “a black perspective”
to legislation. To Stokes, this meant “being able to put an
amendment on a bill in committee that you know will affect
black people . . . that you know goes right to the heart of
some of the kinds of problems confronted by black people.”9
Stokes’s position on Appropriations was the ideal place
for the Cleveland Representative to advocate for funding
that aided Black communities, both in his district and
nationally. He earned a reputation as a congenial but determined activist for issues related to Black America
and the poor and working class more broadly. In his
work in Appropriations, and as a member of the Budget
Committee for six years, Stokes fought against cuts to
social programs proponents said would balance the budget.
Any reduction in federal spending, Stokes argued, would
roll back gains made by Africans Americans in the 1960s
and 1970s. He described conservative efforts to scale back
school desegregation and affirmative action programs as a
“full scale attack” on the priorities of Black communities.
Despite efforts by the Ronald Reagan administration to
curtail funding in 1981, Stokes successfully supported
an additional $145 million in Title I grant funding for
the education of poor children. “Services and resources
necessary to quality in human life (must be) placed
irrevocably ahead of weaponry and defense spending,”
Stokes explained.10
Stokes had a special interest in improving federal
funding for health care, and he was particularly concerned
with reducing what he called the “shocking disparities
between the health of minority Americans and the health
of white Americans.” In the late 1970s, as a member of the
Appropriations Committee, Stokes initially and reluctantly
supported compromise language that banned federal
funds for most abortions but opposed efforts to impose
even more restrictive bans on federal funding, which he
argued would disproportionately affect women living in
poverty. In the Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor,
Health, Education, and Welfare, Stokes was a persistent
advocate for federal funding to establish Morehouse School
of Medicine, which became the third medical school after
Howard University College of Medicine and Meharry
Medical College whose mission was specifically to train
African-American doctors. In 1977, Stokes explained that a
new medical school would help lessen the shortage of Black
doctors and reduce the “disparity between black and white
Americans in the doctor/patient ratio.” He also was an early
advocate of federal government intervention in the fight
against the AIDS epidemic. In 1989, Stokes sponsored the
Disadvantaged Minority Health Improvement Act of 1989,
which among other things, created the Office of Minority
Health and authorized the Department of Health and
Human Services to fund programs and studies “with respect
to the prevention and control among minority groups of
diseases or other adverse health conditions.” A year later,
under new sponsorship, a similar bill passed the House and Senate and was signed into law. During debate on the
House Floor, Stokes was recognized as “the father of the
legislation for many, many years.”11
During his career Stokes, rather than focus on funding
local projects that gained favor with voters, maintained a
national perspective in his Appropriations responsibilities.
He once told a reporter: “I’ve had to analyze how I see
my role in the House. I see myself as representing a
broad minority constituency not only in the district, but
nationally.” And as subcommittee chair, Stokes discussed his
desire to reduce the number of earmarks in the VA-HUD
budget. Nevertheless, Stokes was attentive to local concerns;
during more than two decades on the committee, Stokes
steered hundreds of millions of federal dollars into projects
in his home state, including funding for community
colleges, public housing, economic development,
infrastructure projects, and the funding of a NASA facility
west of Cleveland.12
Democratic leaders frequently sought to capitalize on
Stokes’s reputation for trustworthiness and fairness—turning to him to lead high-profile committees and handle
controversial national issues, as well as the occasional ethics
scandal in the House. When Representative Henry B.
González of Texas abruptly resigned as chair of the Select
Committee on Assassinations after a dispute with staff
and Members, Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. of
Massachusetts tapped Stokes to lead the panel, which was
investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of
President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
During the hearings, Stokes made national news when he
questioned King’s assassin, James Earl Ray. In 1978, the
committee filed 27 volumes of hearings and a final report
that recommended administrative and legislative reforms
regarding the investigation of political assassinations and
prosecution of people involved in assassinations. While
the panel found that the King and the Kennedy murders
may have involved multiple people (James Earl Ray and
Lee Harvey Oswald have traditionally been described as
lone killers), it concluded there was no evidence to support
assertions of a broad conspiracy involving domestic groups
or foreign governments.13
Stokes’s chairmanship of the Select Committee on
Assassinations led to his appointment by Speaker O’Neill
in 1981 as chairman of the House Committee on Standards
of Official Conduct (often called the Ethics Committee).
Initially hesitant to serve as chair, Stokes accepted the position after O’Neill agreed to reform the committee
structure. The Ohio Representative steered the panel
through a turbulent period that included investigations
of Members implicated in an FBI bribery sting, an
investigation into the finances of the 1984 Democratic
Vice-Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, and a scandal
that involved inappropriate relationships between lawmakers
and House Pages. Stokes left the post in 1985 but returned
to lead the Ethics Committee in early 1991. Only months
after resuming the chair Stokes was linked to the House
“bank” scandal; Stokes had written 551 overdrafts against
an informal account maintained by the House Sergeant
at Arms. Stokes did not participate in the Committee on
Standards and Official Conduct’s investigation into the
overdraft scandal, and he did not return to the committee
the following Congress.14
From his seat on the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, Stokes was a forceful critic of the Reagan
administration’s foreign policy. He gained national
prominence as a member of the House Select Committee
to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran—part of
a joint investigative committee with the Senate—when he
questioned Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in 1987 about
his role in funding anticommunist Nicaraguan Contras
through weapons sales to Tehran. Stokes took exception
to North’s frequent insistence that he acted on the best
interest of the United States, and that the congressional
inquiry was counter to American interests abroad. At one
juncture he reminded North, “I wore [the uniform] as
proudly as you do, even when our government required
black and white soldiers in the same Army to live, sleep,
eat and travel separate and apart, while fighting and dying
for our country.”15
During the 1990s, Stokes’s seniority made him an
influential voice on the Appropriations Committee. In
1993, at the start of the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), he
assumed the gavel as chair of the Subcommittee on Veterans
Affairs, HUD, and Independent Agencies, which controlled
one of the largest amounts of discretionary spending in
the federal budget. In this position, Stokes prodded federal
agencies to diversify their workforce and better serve their
minority constituencies. Republicans praised him for his
nonpartisan leadership of the subcommittee, but when the
GOP won control of the House in the 1994 elections, and
Stokes became the ranking member of the panel, he often
found himself fighting Republican efforts to cut welfare programs, including public housing. In one committee
meeting, Stokes noted that he and his brother, Carl,
had grown up in public housing, and that without such
assistance “[we] would be either in jail or dead, we’d be
some kind of statistic.”16
In January 1998, Stokes announced that he would
retire from the House at the end of the 105th Congress
(1997–1999), noting that he wanted to leave “without
ever losing an election.” He conceded that politics had lost
some of its appeal since his brother Carl’s death from cancer
two years earlier. “We used to talk every day. We could run
things by one another,” he recalled. “We could think and
strategize on political issues. I guess without him here, it
really has taken away a lot of what I enjoy about politics.
It’s not the same.” Among his proudest accomplishments
as a Representative, Stokes cited both his ability to bring
federal money to his district to address needs in housing
and urban development and the opportunities that allowed
him to set “historic precedents” as an African-American
lawmaker in the House. “When I started this journey,
I realized that I was the first black American ever to hold
this position in this state,” Stokes told a newspaper reporter.
“I had to write the book . . . I was going to set a standard of
excellence that would give any successor something to shoot
for.” As his replacement, Stokes supported Stephanie Tubbs
Jones, an African-American judge and a former prosecutor
who prevailed in the Democratic primary and easily won
election to the House in 1998. After his congressional
career, Louis Stokes resumed his work as a lawyer in Silver
Spring, Maryland. Stokes died on August 18, 2015. He lay
in state in Cleveland City Hall on August 24.17
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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